Examining Warhammer Healers – overview

Looks like I’ll be playing in the not so distant future. There’s a decent chance I’ll play a healer (oh, gee, big surprise) though there are two other classes that look, well, fun to me. However, given my history and such, I thought I’d do a bit of meandering discussion of this game’s answer to the Priest (and the other healy types).

For the handful of you who haven’t looked, Warhammer has two sides – destruction and order. Each side has four “archetypes” and three races for a total of 12 careers (what we call classes) on each side. Well, not really, as Mythic decided four of these – two on each side – weren’t quite right and pulled them so the game would get out sooner. For those who care, that’s one tank and one melee DPS career. There are three ranged DPS and three healer careers, one for each race on each side.

Now allegedly each side has a mirror career on the other side. I actually prefer “analog”, and some are closer than others. The similarities between the Shadow Warrior (think hunter without a pet) bear little comparison to the Squig Herder (hunter WITH pet, and oh what a pet) beyond the fact they both tend to use bow but are quite competent at melee. ANYWAY… Healers, however, are fairly close analogues – close enough that the other can be considered identical save a handwave and some color text.

So the three healers are Archmage (High Elf)/Shaman (greenskin aka Orc/Goblin); Rune Priest (Dwarf) / Zealot (Chaos); and Warrior Priest (Empire aka Human) / Disciple of Khaine (Dark Elf). Respectively, we’ve got robe level armor (armor level 0) who are offensive/healing spellcasters; Light (level 1) armor who are mainly healers with some offensive capability; and medium (level 2) armored melee healers. These last are NOT paladins, though everyone keeps thinking of them that way (with a bit of justification). One thing Mythic tried to do with all three is make it so they COULD fight alone if they had to. The worst for offense – the RP/Z – has the counteradvantage of taking forever to kill (fast, very good heals), giving plenty of time against most classes for their relatively small damage to matter.

I need to point out here that every class is vulnerable somewhere. In forums this inevitably leads to tears and complaints of needing improvement – and in other forums the early stages of “Nerf These Guys…”

In later posts I’m going to do a bit more detail for those folk who haven’t started. I’ll point out I’m not going to do intimate details yet – I don’t have the game myself to doublecheck – but there’s enough info to give solid understanding nonetheless. The quick point is that each healer has advantages and disadvantages that a smart team leader can juggle for outstanding impact.

Have fun…

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One Response to “Examining Warhammer Healers – overview”

I played a healer just like you in WoW for 3 years and now in WAR. WAR healer are fun fun fun. Zealot is my favorite. Shaman is fun but really popular. I never tried Oder (Order). The WAR bloggers started a guild that is both Order and Destruction. You should check it out at http://www.casualtiesguild.com

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.